


Different Twists of Thread

by tabbycat



Series: Tangled Strings and Technicalities [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe, Deleted Scenes, F/F, F/M, M/M, Outtakes, Sirius Black goes to a WI meeting
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-14
Updated: 2019-07-19
Packaged: 2019-08-23 14:33:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16620842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tabbycat/pseuds/tabbycat
Summary: Outtakes, deleted scenes and alternate universes of my fic Tangled Strings and Technicalities.A few of them sort of work alone (the one with Sirius and the WI does), but most of them make a lot more sense if you’ve read the main fic first.Each chapter marked with content warnings and the chapters it spoils up to, if any.Mainly requests.





	1. Sirius Black and the Women’s Institute

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is an outtake of sorts, requested by reviewer kou_shun_u ages ago.
> 
> Set after Chapter 16, Muggleborn, and can be seen as part of the main story if you like. 
> 
> No pairings, except a fake relationship between Sirius Black and Jo Wright, an OC.
> 
> Sirius Black goes to the Women’s Institute with his Muggleborn neighbour, Jo. No warnings.

“And you’re having me carry this whole… what even is this? … without magic?” Sirius clutched the pile of boxes, which he had been reliably informed were called ‘Tupperware’, as carefully as he could. What Tupperware exactly was, and what differentiated it from any other box you could put your food in, he had no idea.

Well, they were pink. That was a start, he supposed.

One had to start somewhere if they were going to go into the Muggle world.

“My dear,” said Jo. “We’re going to a Muggle party. You walk in with your self-propelling silver platters that ask you politely if you want a cheese or a ham sarnie, you get kicked back out and you get a lot of questions from the Ministry of Magic afterwards.”

“From experience?”

“I don’t own fancy silverware. Need a lot of Galleons for that, even in the magical world. But yes, I have had minor scrapes with the Ministry over the Statute of Secrecy. I have to say though, I still don’t accept that it was my fault that the sofa tried to eat Mrs Smith. I told her the sofa didn’t like having shoes on it. Twice.”

“How have you avoided Azkaban?”

“My charm. Come on, duck, we’ll be late. Can you fit another tub onto your pile? I would load them into my car, but I’ve forgotten where I parked it and I would not recommend using a Summoning Charm on your car. Dangerous, and painful, let me tell you that now. Dangerous and painful.”

Sirius knew that well enough, from experience with a certain flying motorbike. Although that particular incident had not been, and had never been, his fault. 

It had happened three times before James had learnt his lesson.

The open meeting of the Saltburn and Area branch of the Women’s Institute was to be held in the function room of a large hotel on the seafront, an imposing brick building decorated with an impressive quantity of flags. Sirius entered with trepidation. He’d agreed to this because he’d thought it would be funny. It was a practical joke, essentially, although perhaps not as fun when you were playing them on people you’d never met. And not with any of his favourite accomplices.

“Ah, Joanne,” said a blonde lady with a lime green twinset and a self-important air to her. “The buffet. Splendid. Over there, please.”

“Sirius, meet Dorothy Hale,” said Jo. “The chair of the local branch. Dorothy, this is Mr Sirius Black.”

“Charmed,” said Dorothy, holding out her hand for him to shake. She wore the most insincere look Sirius had seen in years on her face. “I wasn’t aware that you were bringing a guest. Is this your son-in-law?”

“Boyfriend,” said Sirius, with a grin, winking.

“Lover,” said Jo, simultaneously.

“You know,” said Sirius. “Bit of fun.”

“Best lay I’ve had,” said Jo.

Dorothy Hale did not seem to know what to say to that. She blinked several times in rapid succession before muttering something about buffet timings and wandering off, shaking her head.

“That’ll serve her right for always calling me Joanne,” said Jo. “She’s a stuck-up bugger. I thought this was supposed to be an enlightened era of sexual freedom. Even Muggles have contraception these days, did you know?”

“I didn’t,” said Sirius. He watched the twinset woman having an animated conversation with her friend, still looking horrified. Both women kept stealing glances at him. “Do you think we overdid that?”

“Not at all, my dear. I felt we were quite restrained.”

“No physical displays of affection over the buffet. Yet.”

“And if it’s alright with you, duck, I’d rather there weren’t any. You’re an incredibly attractive man, Sirius, but I’d not want to squash the miniature soufflés before everyone has had the chance to hassle me for my secret recipe. I’ve never yet given it out, and several of them still believe they can crack me.”

“And what is the recipe?”

“You might have the best arse in this room, but I’m still not telling you. There’s not a lot of competition on the arse front, granted, but there isn’t on the soufflé front either. And I’d like it to remain that way.”

There was a scandalised noise behind them, and an older woman using some kind of metal tubes to walk with tutted at the pair of them. Jo winked at Sirius, and he thought that perhaps there was some fun to be had in elaborate pranks without his Marauders after all.

There were several men in attendance tonight, it being some kind of formal annual party, but it was abundantly clear to Sirius that it was the women that ran the show. Dorothy Hale delivered the most boring speech he had ever heard, which included all of those Sirius had heard in his infrequent trips to the Wizengamot, even the ones on maximum lengths of wands (over seventeen inches was officially classed as ‘dangerous in close range spellcasting’ thanks to that debate, and apparently it was rude to snigger at the subject matter). In fact, he was certain the only person more dull than this was Professor Binns at Hogwarts.

“And I’d like to thank Mary, Helen and Susan for their tireless work arranging the craft exhibits for the Yorkshire Knitters Guild Annual Show, and…”

Sirius yawned. Unintentionally, and really very loudly.

This earns him more scandalised looks, and a snicker of laughter from Jo next to him.

“You’re doing well, if your aim is to irritate them all.”

“It sort of is.”

“Good boy. Knew there was a reason I’d brought you.”

“Is it always this dull?” he asked, after the speeches were over.

“Usually worse. Last year they had three speeches. They’ve tailed it back though, which is probably for the best. I considered faking a dramatic fit of the faints.”

“What I don’t understand,” said Sirius, looking around, “is what the point of all of this is.”

“It’s a conspiracy,” said Jo, cheerily. “Keep us busy here bitching about one another and flower arranging, else we’d be trying to take over all the men’s jobs on the council or something. And then where would the world be? Better, let me tell you.”

“So it’s all just to stop women getting into government?”

“I have no idea, duck. I don’t listen. I’m here for the cake.”

The cake was definitely worth it, Sirius decided. He had to sample all of them, just to be sure, but apart from a flapjack with apricots in (nobody really liked apricots, they just pretended they did, in his opinion) they were all good. Better than that one he’d baked for Hermione’s birthday.

He told Jo that story.

“I don’t even understand why,” he was saying, “but the flour sort of exploded. Is that supposed to happen?”

“No,” said Jo. “Certainly not.”

“Well, sometimes you just need an explosion.”

“That’s my grandson’s attitude. I keep suggesting he stops blowing up my vases, but will he listen? No. Thank fuck for magic, I say.”

“Magic?” Dorothy Hale again.

“Oh, yes, magic. My Sirius here, he’s an expert.”

“A magician? We could do with him, we’re short on entertainment. Majorie’s granddaughters were supposed to be dancing, but one of them has the chickenpox, and well, Anne’s having that treatment, so we can’t even have the rest of them. Terrible. But you’ll do, I suppose.” She looked him up and down as if she still didn’t approve of him.

“A magic show?” he spluttered.

“He’ll do it,” said Jo, with what he could only describe as a nefarious grin. “I can be the glamorous assistant.”

“Thank you. On stage in fifteen minutes please.”

“It isn’t a breach of the Statute of Secrecy if you look like a Muggle magician,” she whispered. “I’ve checked.”

And that was how Sirius Black ended up performing magic in front of an audience of enraptured middle-aged Muggles, who all seemed to fancy him as a result of it.

“I’m flattered,” he said. “But I already have a girlfriend.”

Jo winked.

“He’s taken, girls. Form a queue behind me.”


	2. Another Choice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is an AU scene, requested by ReddieSpaghetti.
> 
> Fits amongst Chapter 43, Two Weddings, but is an AU from about two thirds of the way down that chapter.
> 
> Regulus Black/Francis Macmillian (OC)
> 
> Regulus makes a different choice on the morning of his wedding to Adeline. No warnings, but some references to sexual situations (no smut).

_Francis  
July 1979, London_

He wasn’t going to the sodding wedding.

Society wedding of the year, apparently. But he still wasn’t going.

His mother had been less than impressed. He’d not told her why, for Regulus’ sake as much as anything, because his mother couldn’t keep anything to herself, and Georgina was an even bigger gossip, so between his mother and his sister everyone would know that the groom had been fucking some bloke. Which was, Francis reckoned, not what you wanted from your wedding day.

He suspected the bride, Adeline Fawley, knew more than she let on, but still. 

Francis didn’t want to make a fuss, anyway. He may not have quite Regulus’ breeding and manners, but he had enough to know when to give up gracefully. He’d made his point. He’d said his piece. And the ball had been firmly in Regulus’ hoops, and, well, Regulus had chosen Adeline. So that, he thought, was that.

Besides, he’d been invited to James Potter’s wedding, and accepted, so it wasn’t as if he would be sat at home moping alone. He’d go and get drunk, and see if he could find somebody there who was a little bit flexible on who they slept with. Rumour had it the Prewetts would be there, and one of them liked other men, not that Francis could ever remember which.

“Are you certain you do not wish to come?”

“Yes, mother.”

She stood in his doorway, her hair done up in some ridiculous fashion, her dress robes a forest green. As far as he recalled, his mother had never actually liked the Blacks. But she did like an occasion.

“Very well.” She disappeared. She’d never had much time for him, not since he’d refused to consider any of her suggestions for marriages. He’d told her his interests lay in other boys countless times, but she was perhaps wilfully not listening. His brother had got his wife pregnant, anyway. He was shortly to become even less significant.

It was freeing, in some ways.

He waited until they were gone, the rest of his family, and then dressed himself. Grey dress robes, because that was what he owned, and his hair brushed. That’d do.

He never did leave for the wedding, because just as he was about to, somebody fell through the Floo.

 

_Regulus  
July 1979, Grimmauld Place_

He could not do this.

It was becoming very much clear to Regulus that he could not, or perhaps would not, marry Adeline. He did not love her, but that was not the problem that was at hand. The number of wizards of his status that loved their wives before they married them was small, at best. You made a match that suited your families and your temperaments, and you grew together.

Or you did not.

What if he and Adeline did not?

No, it was becoming really rather clear that Regulus could not marry her, because his heart was somewhere else entirely.

It was, of course, with him.

Regulus stood in his bedroom for a further five minutes, until he had resolved what it was he intended to do. He walked downstairs, as calmly as he could, to the thankfully deserted kitchen. He took a handful of Floo powder and threw it into the grate, clearly enunciating the address.

Francis was there.

“Regulus?” he asked, his eyes widening. “Regulus?”

“Francis.” It was difficult to look dignified when on the floor. Somehow he had lost his balance in the Floo, which was not something he usually did. He got to his feet, as Francis continued to stare at him.

“What on earth are you doing here? You’re supposed to be getting married today.”

“I am not.” That was clear enough now.

“You’re wearing wedding robes.”

“Yes. But I am not to be getting married today. I do not love her.”

“You said, I remember it, that love would come. That it was not expected to love her straight away.” Francis raised one eyebrow, and crossed his arms.

“I said that. I do not believe it. It is possible, certainly, but it is not what I wish for.”

“Yeah?” asked Francis, stepping forward with a slight smile, as if he wanted to believe what Regulus was going to say next. “What do you wish for, then?”

“You.” Regulus breathed out the word, rather than saying it. He was certain enough, but enough years of conditioning held him back, still. “I wish for you.”

“I said I wasn’t fucking around with a married man,” Francis said. “That you’d have to choose me.”

“I am,” said Regulus. “I am choosing you.”

Neither of them moved or spoke. The room felt too warm. The collar of his robes itchy.

“What about your family?” Francis asked. “What about duty, and honour, and doing what was right for the whole of wizardkind, or whatever it was you said about why you were marrying her?”

“I do not know.” He was about to lose his resolve, there, thinking of his mother’s face when she found out. He would be disowned. There was no going backwards from that. The Dark Lord had asked him to marry. No, the Dark Lord had ordered him to marry, and to produce children to bolster the flagging Black lineage.

“I want you to be certain,” said Francis. He backed away from Regulus a few steps, leaning up against the mantelpiece. “I want you to be sure that this isn’t just, I don’t know, cold feet. That you’re not going to climb into my bed, my life, today and then run back to your fiancee and your family and your dark lord tomorrow.”

Regulus took his time. He had to. He had to know, even though he had taken the first step by even coming here, that this was the route he wished to take. He thought of the futures, the possibilities of where his life would go if he took the choice as it was presented to him. Regulus Black had always prided himself on making his own choices. The choices that would do the best for him, and for his family, and for wizarding society. 

It was a rather large mantel to bear, for one barely out of Hogwarts.

He could go home, pretend that he had been busy, and resume the life he had always assumed he would have. The path that his family expected him to walk. He would get married to his beautiful bride, he would remain by the Dark Lord’s side, he would provide his family with heirs. It was the right thing to do, was it not?

And yet he felt so clearly that he did not want it. Neither had Uncle Cygnus, but he had done it. He had produced three daughters, raised them, made two of them appropriate marriages. 

Neither had Uncle Alphard, who had disappeared off to sire a illegitimate daughter. Neither had Andromeda, who had married a Mudblood. Neither had Sirius.

They had all appeared as if they were so sure of their path. They had all been, ultimately, happy with their choices.

Regulus wondered if, for many years, he had in fact been making his own choices, after all.

“I am sure,” he said. “I want you. I think, perhaps, it has always been you that I have wanted.”

“Good,” said Francis. “Because it’s always been you that I’ve wanted, too.”

Francis stepped forwards and grabbed Regulus by the shoulder, and Regulus grabbed at his waist, and their lips met, and this was what he had been meant for. He had been meant for Francis. For everything that this was, and everything that the other was not.

They squashed together, as if they were trying to become a part of one another. The days that had stretched since they were last together seemed not to matter any more, as neither did the distance that had been put between them by the Dark Lord and the Order of the Phoenix and everything else that had been going on in their lives. The war, his family, the choices that he had made before this day.

The wrong choices, very much so. The wrong choices.

“Bed?” Francis asked, with his cheeky smile that Regulus so loved.

“I love you,” he said. 

“Fucking hell, Regulus,” said Francis, pulling him by the hand. “I love you too. Always have.”

He pushed back thoughts of Adeline as he followed Francis up the stairs. That was not for now.

All of this was something that needed to be dealt with, though. He had to tell his family. He paced the floor afterwards, Francis lolling in bed entirely naked and such a distraction. He still held his morals. 

“I need to talk to Adeline.”

“Not going back to her?”

“No. It is you, for me.”

“I see why you want to tell her. You’re principled. I like that about you.”

“I hope that I am.”

“What about he Dark Lord?” Francis propped himself up on his elbows.

“I will leave him. I will find a way.”

“Just go. They can’t find you, can they?”

Regulus rolled up his sleeve, revealing the Dark Mark that marred his forearm. It was darker than it had even when he had left Grimmauld Place, darker and altogether more menacing. 

“Oh,” said Francis. He began to look for his underwear, as if this was not something to be discussed in the nude. Regulus supposed that it was not.

“I will have to do something about this.”

“Come back,” said Francis.

Regulus would never have done anything different. Not now, not ever. Not now he had finally begun to make his own choices, in truth as well as in words.

 

_Francis  
September 1979, Caen, France_

The war raged, and Regulus hid. They shared a tiny cottage on the outskirts of Caen, in northern France. They’d worked out that the Dark Mark was weaker abroad. 

Francis could not believe that he had been so lucky. To have Regulus there, every day, when he woke up and when he went to bed. It seemed too good to be true.

They had agreed that Francis would go about his every day business, so as not to arouse suspicion. He went to work, he went to visit his family and his friends. He returned home, to see the man that he loved.

When the war was over, he decided, when the war was over he was going to introduce Regulus to everyone. He’d proudly have the man on his arm, then. Proudly show him off, and he’d take him to parties, and they’d be together like a normal couple.

The news reports were dark. He remained active in the Order, when he could. Regulus Black was officially declared dead, when a body resembling his was found in the river Thames. 

Sirius Black cried. Francis wondered whether he would be safe to introduce to the secret. He decided not. Some things were better kept as minimal as possible.

But he did tell Regulus.

“Your brother mourns you,” he said, throwing his cloak onto the rack. Regulus liked neatness. Francis was messy, but he didn’t find it a sacrifice to keep things neat these days. Not if it made his Regulus happy.

“It was to keep you safe,” said Regulus. “I did not want to upset him.”

“Keep you safe, first and foremost,” said Francis, sliding on the sofa next to him. “I’m not the one in so much danger.”

“No. You chose the right side from the beginning. You are only the ordinary sort of traitor. I have committed treason, in the eyes of the Dark Lord.”

“Don’t call him that. Makes you sound like one of them.”

Regulus raised his wrist, where the tattoo burned ever stronger. He would never say it, but Francis knew that it pained him. 

“You’re not,” said Francis. “You’re not because you left.”

“One does not leave the Dark Lord.”

“Fuck him.”

“I do not wish to. I only wish to do that act with you.”

Francis laughed. “Only you’d be so fucking prim.”

“I am well bred.”

“Not too well bred for this.” He rolled his boyfriend over, tearing off his clothes, and Regulus joined in with enthusiasm. See. Never too well bred for this.

“I want to take you to see France properly,” said Francis, afterwards. “It isn’t fair you’re stuck here like this.”

“When the war is over,” said Regulus.

“Yes. When the war is over.”

Regulus leant in, and kissed him.

This was more than Francis could have hoped for, really. But when the war was over, that’s when they would get their real happily ever after, like in a children’s story.


	3. The Joy of Bureaucracy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Someone requested this ages ago - a scene between Luna and Walburga in the records office. I’ve had this in my to-be-finished pile for a good eight months, and so I’m just going to chuck it out here now. I think in an ideal world it would be longer, but there you are.

_Luna  
Summer of 1979, Ministry of Magic_

“I’m here to file a license.”

Luna looked up from her desk at the sound of the woman’s impossibly posh voice, but not before she’d placed her internal bet as to who it was.

Her top choice was Eleanor from Magical Transportation. Nice enough, but had a bit of an inflated opinion about how important her Portkey licenses were to the efficient running of government. If it wasn’t her, it was Portia from Internal Audit. If anything, Audit had an under-inflated opinion of the importance of their work. Rather worrying, Luna thought, but then it wasn’t her area, and what did she know?

“I wish to do it immediately.”

Oh, well, Luna had not expected that. Walburga Black. With a flick of her wand under her desk she added a point against herself on her personal tally chart. She was right more often than not.

“Please do take a seat in the corridor,” she said, politely. “After you’ve taken your ticket, of course. It would not do to be without a ticket. We wouldn’t know where we were without our tickets.” Another flick of her wand, and a small ticket machine appeared on the wall that Luna pointed at.

Walburga glared, and took one.

Number one-thousand-and-forty-five. 

“Yes, please wait outside, as you can see, I am really rather busy.”

“You appear to be making a… a… what is that?”

“Oh, have you never seen one of these before? It’s a paper aeroplane.” Luna tapped it twice with her wand and threw it, where it did several neat loops of the office and landed back on her desk. “Perhaps the correct term is a parchment aeroplane, given it’s composition. Strictly speaking, it isn’t made from paper, is it? I bought a paper notepad the other day, and, I felt rather like parchment has a better weight to it for this kind of work. But for origami, well, it just doesn’t work in the same way with parchment.”

Walburga looked as though she would stamp her feet, if such a well bred lady was allowed to stamp her feet. Luna wondered if she could make her. It was cruel, perhaps, but so was she.

“Please wait outside.”

“This ticket says number one thousand and forty five. Pray tell me, which number are you seeing at present?”

Luna flicked her wand a third time, and indicated the screen she’d created.

“Number one?”

“Well, yes, as I have said,” Luna said, attempting to suppress a grin, as that would not be professional. “I am rather busy at present.”

“Please fetch your manager.” Walburga was clearly not somebody that was used to being ignored. Luna sighed, quietly. She was not somebody who was used to being spoken to quite like that.

“Certainly. Please, do take a seat outside. Unfortunately I’m just really not allowed to have you in here without a member of staff present. And my colleague is out at lunch at the moment.”

“It is nine fifteen in the morning.”

“Oh, yes, I see that, but she does like to take her lunch early. She says it focuses her better on her work. I am rather the other way around, I like my lunch later. I find I get rather soporific if I am full, and I do like to work quickly and to my best potential. Don’t you?”

“Fetch me your manager.”

Luna offered her a disarming, perfect smile. “Please do take a seat, then.”

She wandered off, wondering how long she could keep Walburga waiting. She suspected she had ten minutes before the other woman decided to storm off around the Ministry, looking for someone to complain to about her, and it was really rather better if nobody was quite sure what was going on. Her boss was entirely uninterested in checking Luna’s work, and she preferred it to stay that way.

Especially seeing as her boss believed her to be Pandora Lovegood, and despite all of the similarities, her and her mother had such very different cheekbones.

So Luna spent eight and a half minutes practicing handstands up against the wall of a corridor nobody ever used, and then walked back down to Walburga.

“I am afraid that my manager is unavailable.”

Walburga muttered for a good three and a quarter minutes about Ministry inefficiency, but remained in her seat. The screen had ticked up to number five in Luna’s absence.

“You are not seeing anyone.”

The number had ticked up from five to seven.

“The Ministry prides itself on efficiency.”

“I will curse you and all of your family,” muttered Walburga, getting far closer to Luna’s face than etiquette should dictate she would be allowed to, “if you do not allow me to file this permit immediately!"

Luna was forced to assume that Walburga was telling the truth. She had certainly had no complaint about cursing her own eldest son, after all. But Luna was not someone who gave in to this sort of aggressive posturing. She’d never liked it. People like that were usually compensating for something.

Wand length, perhaps. 

Luna tipped her head onto one side and offered Walburga her hardest stare.

“I do try my best, you know.”

“Do you not know who it is that I am?”

Oh, so she was going to try that trick? 

“Excuse me,” said Luna, turning her back on Walburga and looking in a filing cabinet. “Ah, yes.”

She sat down at the desk and withdrew a quill and ink, placing the form in front of the on the desk as if she was ready to work. Carefully, slowly, she began to fill it out.

“Do you not need any information from me?” Walburga asked.

“Oh, yes. Name, please.”

“Walburga Black.”

“Full name? It is important I use every detail.”

“Walburga Andromeda Black.”

“I do so love your middle name,” said Luna, sweetly. Walburga grimaced. It must remind her of her disowned niece every time she had to use it. 

Now Luna was not interested in being pointlessly cruel. That, she thought, was rather more the woman in front of her’s domain. But sometimes one deserved their own behaviour reflected back. In a way. Luna did not see the point of threatening to curse someone. It took away all the element of surprise.

She continued filling in the form, in her neatest, most swirly script.

“Do you not need to know what sort of license it is I am filing?” Walburga asked, after four minutes and two seconds.

“Oh, that is not relevant right now. You see, I’m filling in a report form. For Unreasonable Threats Against a Ministry Employee.” Form number eight hundred and six in the Ministry’s filing system, and Luna had been pleasantly surprised to discover this one. It was true that the form was functionally defunct, having been replaced by form number one thousand and thirty seven, Threatening Activities towards a Member of Ministry Staff, which was almost half a foot of parchment shorter. Nobody had therefore filed one of these in six and a half years, but it was still possible to. And, besides, Luna liked this one better.

“I have not,” Walburga said, pulling herself up to her full height, “been unreasonable.”

“Oh?”

“I merely wish to file a license, and I do not think it is too much to ask for me to be able to do so in the correct government department.”

Luna didn’t really think that was unreasonable, she supposed. The Ministry was highly inefficient, and after all, hadn’t she been complaining just yesterday that the Wrackspurt problem clearly was causing problems in the Department of Magical Transportation? Not that Eleanor had been interested, but Luna was rather used to that. Eleanor was not the best of listeners even on a topic she found stimulating. Which was, almost exclusively, the Floo system.

Luna thought that she could live a thousand years, and still be surprised by the strange things people chose to take an interest in.

“It’s alright,” said Luna. “The complaint form is only another three and a half feet of parchment. I’ll be done in about twenty minutes.”

“I am a personal friend of the Minister.”

“Oh, really? The Minister has never mentioned it.” Perhaps that was because Luna had never spoken to the Minister, but she didn’t see the need to elaborate. She wasn’t entirely sure the Minister knew who she was. It was probably for the best.

“Yes. And you will no longer have a job if you do not do exactly as I ask.”

Luna ignored her. Not that there was anything much to ignore, unless one found the tapping of fingernails on a wand and the incessant glaring to be annoying. Luna didn’t.

“You will stop filling in that form.”

There was a wand pointing in Luna’s face. This was not unexpected, but Luna had supposed that Walburga had slightly more self-control than this. At least in public, anyway. Maybe it was the stress of a wedding. Ginny had informed Luna that they were very stressful.

“Please.” Luna did not think it’d cost her so much to use the word.

Apparently Walburga disagreed, because all she did was remain exactly as she had been.

Luna sighed. Bureaucracy took the time it took, but with a wand in her face, there wasn’t much option for adding extra. Because she entirely believed Walburga Black would use said wand. No matter how many forms it necessitated filling in. 

“There’s six extra forms if a member of Ministry staff is threatened at wandpoint," said Luna, calmly as anything, and summoned them. “It entirely depends how much longer you want to be here. I think it’s eleven if you curse me. I don’t know exactly why it takes five forms to explain a single curse, but there you have it. Nothing in the Ministry is straightforward is it?” She tipped her head to one side again, smiling as sweetly as she could. “But of course, if you’re such personal friends with the Minister, it makes me wonder why on earth someone of your station has to come down to my little office after all. Isn’t is terribly lower-class?”

Nargles, Luna decided. That was what was causing the look on Walburga’s face. It was either that, constipation, or she was just an intrinsically terrible person.

Maybe there was no explanation other than that.


	4. Termites

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was originally written for the main story, but it was removed for a few reasons. Number one was obviously that there was already enough pre-battle prep, and this scene wasn’t one of the ones that made the cut when I was editing. Number two is that I felt some of the themes here didn’t quite fit with the rest of it, mainly the references to religion. I’ve got nothing against religion (or Swansea) but I think it’s interesting that it isn’t referenced much in Harry Potter when you’d think a fair few students from Muggle backgrounds would have some religious beliefs.
> 
> For those interested in this sort of thing, there’s a tenuous link here back to Jo in the first part of the story; the hymn referenced is heavily associated with the Women’s Institute.
> 
> Remus’ Mam-gu is his grandma, pronounced mam gi.

_Hermione  
November 1979, Saltburn-by-Sea_

“My mother used to sing that song. Jerusalem, wasn’t it? The hymn.”

Hermione hadn’t been aware she’d been singing anything until Remus had entered the room, awkwardly clutching a yellow teacup in his left hand. 

“Sorry,” he said. “It just reminds me of home.”

“Wales?”

“Yes. They’re very religious, the Welsh. Well. I’ve never been sure if most of them believe, but you go to church because it’s the thing to do. Or it is in the rural areas, anyway. I don’t think the same’s true of Cardiff. Or Newport. But Newport is a law unto itself, isn’t it, and as for Swansea…”

He tailed off, once again going back to looking awkward and now slightly apologetic.

“I’m rambling.”

“It’s alright. You’re nervous. We all are.” Hermione put down the pot she had been washing, by hand, for some reason, and turned to face him. She leant back onto the counter, avoiding the splashes of water that decorated the worktop. “And for entirely valid reasons, I think.”

“Yeah. We could all be dead by tomorrow. Don’t you think? I don’t know, we’ve almost got all of the Horcruxes, and then what? We make a move? Hw discovers one missing?”

“But we won’t be.” Hermione said it with more confidence than she had.

“Unfortunately, there isn’t any guarantees. I died in a final battle in your future. I can’t assume the same won’t happen again.”

Hermione doesn’t know what to say to that. She doesn’t have any words of wisdom or anything really, not anything that isn’t trite and based on at least an intent to mislead, if not a lie. Instead she just sort of patted his arm, which he seemed to take in the manner in which she’d intended it.

“How do you know the song?”

“My mother used to sing it, too. She wasn’t religious, but she liked the song. Said it spoke to her of hope. It’s about fighting, I think, mostly, but I think I get what she meant. It’s about fighting in the hope of something better, maybe.”

“That’s my mother’s name. Hope. I don’t think my mum believed. She did, before I was bitten, but…” Remus tailed off again, leaning onto the doorframe. He’d been chewing at his fingernails, a trait Hermione would never have associated with Remus. His hand twisted around the teacup with nervous energy, his face weary with something that wasn’t any physical tiredness.

“That sort of thing can kill a belief, I suppose. Or double it. It’s one of the things I find funny about the wizarding world, you know. Nobody believes in God, or if they do, they don’t say they do. It makes me wonder how a religious family would cope with the transition.”

Remus laughed, if slightly sadly.

“In my case, badly. My mum once tried to tell her mother that I had magic. It went terribly, so I’m led to believe. Mam-gu was very religious. There was a lot of shouting about the devil, let me tell you. Not that I’d want to tar all religious people with the same brush, I’d imagine they’re as different from one another as wizards are, if you see what I mean. There was a Hufflepuff in my year at school who seemed to be religious, and her family coped well enough. But Mam-gu's priest was big on the devil. Metaphorically. You know what I mean, don’t you?”

Hermione smiled.   
“My parents decided against ever telling my grandmother. She was a Muggle, too. As far as she’s concerned, I won a scholarship to Cheltenham Ladies College. I expect I’d have been off to Oxford after that, probably to study medicine or dentistry.”

“That was probably a wise choice. The lying. Not the medicine. Or dentistry. Dentists are a con.”

“My parents are dentists.”

“Ah. Bollocks.”

Hermione laughed. “It’s fine. If it helps, I hated that they were dentists for, oh, my whole childhood. I didn’t have sugar until I was nine, and I saved up all my pocket money and bought sixteen bags of sweets at the school disco. They reacted like I’d taken drugs.”

“Every parent has their overreactions. My mother’s is shoes indoors. Dad’s is, well, werewolves, I suppose.”

Hermione thought of about six things she could say, but said none of them, because they didn’t seem right. 

“You’re not any less for what you are,” she settled on. “There was a day in my future where you believed that, I think.”  
“Good. Ginny helps, you know. I don’t want to be reliant on a woman for my self-worth, or Luna says I shouldn’t be, but I don’t know. It helps.”

That sounded like Luna, Hermione thought. Not that she was wrong.

“I get it,” she said, because she did. “Honestly, I think I was a massive idiot when we arrived here. I kept trying to stop the others from intervening in the way things were going. I wanted to keep the future as it was, because then I could go back to my life where everything was over, you know, and everything was settled. I didn’t want to fight another war. And Sirius wanted to, and the more he wanted to the less I did, even though there was this part of me that wanted to do it, too. I regret it.”

“You did what you thought was right, didn’t you?”

Hermione thought about that. She didn’t see now how it ever could have been right.

“It wasn’t right.”

“Benefits of hindsight.” Remus patted her arm this time. Maybe it hadn’t been a weird thing to do. It was actually weirdly comforting.

“Feels like there’s blood on my hands.”

“I’m not going to tell you there isn’t,” said Remus. “I’m not sure if I should, but, fuck it, I’m going to say that yes, maybe there is, and maybe there’s blood on all of our hands, because everyone has something that they could have done differently. You’ve done enough since to make up for it. Don’t you preach forgiveness for Regulus? He’s done worse.”

“Thanks. I suppose you’re right.”

“Everyone’s right sometimes.” He got up and washed up the cups, placing each of them onto the drying rack with precision. 

“So, hope,” he said, leaning on the cabinets. “The virtue, not my mother.”

“What about it?”

“I’ve always counted myself as someone who didn’t hope for things. I don’t tend to get things I want by accident, you see. So I didn’t see much point in hope. But I’ve been returning to it, more and more, because we’ve planned all this out within an inch of it, and I feel like it’s still fifty-fifty whether it’ll work at all. So all I can do is hope.” He turned the handle of a teacup slowly, rotating it around to lie perpendicular to the edge of the worktop. “It makes me feel useless, it doesn’t work at all.”

“Luna tried to make me do yoga this morning.” Hermione stifled an inappropriate laugh. “It didn’t work, obviously. And Ginny and Sirius are whacking Bludgers at one another again, Regulus is off being all well-bred and stiff upper lip somewhere, you look like you’re coping, I don’t know, everyone seems so well adjusted. And I’m just sat here being neurotic.”

“If if helps, you can add me to the neurotic club.”

“I don’t think it does.”

“No, I don’t either. It makes me feel more normal, yes, but not less like this could all go wrong at a moment’s notice.” 

Remus began rooting through the cupboards for food. They were almost bare, if very well scrubbed. Some might have taken that as some kind of sign that the inhabitants of the house didn’t intend to survive whatever it was they set out to do in the next couple of days. Hermione knew better. They remained as incompetent collectively at household management as they ever had. 

“You don’t have any food,” he said. “Why do you never have any food?”

For some reason, Hermione began to laugh, properly this time.

“Hope,” she said, eventually. “We all hope somebody else will give in first and go food shopping.”

He joined in the laughter.

“I suppose we’ve finally found a use for hope. Chinese takeaway? Ginny introduced me, last week, and I’ve had a strange hankering for sweet and sour vegetables ever since.”

“Only if we can get the chicken curry too.”

“Vegetarian.”

“Oh, yeah, I knew that.”

“It’s weird,” he said, setting a bag of flour down on the worktop as he continued to go through the cupboards, “you know all of these about me, and I know some of it will never be relevant, because hopefully it’s going to go a different way, but it’s weird, isn’t it? How you knew all of this about me before we even met?”

“I’d know some of it anyway,” Hermione said, getting up for no reason at all. She was restless, a lot of the time. “Ginny would have gossiped.”

“But it’s more than that, and you know it is.”

“True.”

“In some ways it’s a relief. I don’t handle telling people about my lycanthropy,” he said, with the emphasis on the word lycanthropy being one of total hatred, “very well. So her already knowing it helped. In other ways,” he paused, fiddling with a jar, “well, in other ways, I don’t like it. You know all these things about me, and some of them make me sound far better than I am, and some of them far worse.”

“You acted how you could have at the time, I think. Like I said, I’m not always proud of how I’ve acted.”

“No. I suppose we never are. Hindsight again.”

“Yeah. When we were hunting the Horcruxes, there was a lot of blank time. I spent a lot of it trying to work out where I’d gone wrong. I think I was trying to work out how I could have prevented the whole hunt happening, maybe I could have worked everything Dumbledore had out for myself, sorted it out, made it so Harry and Ron and I had never had to go through what we had.”

“You were eighteen.”

“I didn’t say it was sensible, or that I had any hope of managing it.” She sighed. It hadn’t been sensible at all. “You get it, though, I think. You understand what it feels like to be thrown into something like this, and like you have no control over it, and yet like you have to fix it.”

“I do.”

“It’s shit.”

“I always assumed my life wouldn’t be straightforward,” he said, with his back to her, now rearranging tins into a line, separated by colour. “I mean, from the bite, at least. But, if I’m honest, and I can’t see why I wouldn’t be, this isn’t at all a direction even I would have expected.”

“No. Well, me neither. Do you believe in fate?”

“I’ve got a complicated relationship with fate. You?”

“No. Not really. Sometimes.”

“But you don’t see any other way that you could be so happy with something so terrifying, implausible and shit?”

“Exactly.”

“Look.” Remus turned to face her, a tin of chopped tomatoes in his hand. “I’m not the person to give life advice. I’m nineteen, I’m involved in secret plans upon secret plans, I throw myself into fights against people who’ll happily kill me, and my friends are all the type of person that thinks my life is entirely normal, possibly even something to aspire to. I’m a bloody werewolf. But, I don’t know, maybe we shouldn’t overthink this. Maybe we should just accept that we’re happy, in a way, and that’s a good thing, and maybe we should just hope that we won’t die tomorrow.”

“Day after?”

“Promised to take Ginny for dinner the day after tomorrow, and I’d rather not let her down. The day after that is a solid possibility.”

Hermione smiled.

“That wasn’t terrible advice,” she said. “Perhaps it’s really that simple.”

“It probably isn’t. I think I do believe in fate. Or at least I believe that it’s entirely possible for a set of complete coincidences and individual choices to align in a way that’s favourable for everyone.” He looked down at the tin in his hand. “Also, this tin went out of date in 1971. How?”

“We always hope somebody else will tidy up?”

“The flour has termites.”

“Fate has given us termites as a sign?”

Remus began to laugh, and Hermione found herself joining in, slightly hysterically, yes, but it was something. It was something that wasn’t thinking about plans and war and impeding doom.


End file.
